$8,000 bed? Select Comfort gets a bounce with 'smart bed'

The 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show currently underway at the Las Vegas Convention Center features a myriad of mind-blowing tech advances. The Las Vegas Sun says the annual trade show has the latest from more than 3,200 exhibitors.

Amid the wearable tech, ultra HD smart TVs and intelligent toothbrushes, a bed is getting a bounce in interest. It comes from Plymouth-based Select Comfort, which operates 432 retail stores that sell its customizable and adjustable Sleep Number bed.

Time Magazine notes it's not just any bed. It's a Sleep Number X12 that will retail for $8,000 when it goes on sale in February. Time's impressed tech writer says the gadget-laden bed comes with "all the bells and whistles," including sensors to monitor sleep patterns, and help for those who snore – or their partners. The Partner Snore button on the bed's wireless remote tilts the head section of a partner’s side of the bed by six degrees – enough to get them to stop snoring.

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The Star Tribune says the bed will attract users who dream of a better night's sleep or those who have become interested in physiological self-tracking. The bed reads breathing rates and heart beats without requiring users to touch or wear monitoring apparatus. They simply lie on the bed and the technology automatically captures data and sends it to a computer, tablet or cellphone via the company's proprietary data-collection system.

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The Sleep Number X12, which USA Today called a "smart bed," comes with memory foam and an array of lighting options, also does full-body massage. (It doesn't make toast, however.)

Piper Jaffray analyst Peter Keith told the Star Tribune that while the new bed is extraordinarily expensive, "If each [of Select Comfort’s 432 retail stores] sells just one of this new bed, say every other month, that will raise their revenues by 2 percent a year.”

The Time story says Select Comfort will make some of the high-tech features available as options on all of its beds – which start at around $1,000 — by year's end.